Thursday, May 21, 2015

The Contemporary Art Society of Victoria has a brooch show opening on the 1st of June and since members get to enter for no charge I thought I should participate. I made three brooches from paper pulp pressed into carved plaster that I coated with shellac and graphite then acrylic paint then scraped back some of the paint.

Fossil 15#3

Fossil 15#2

Fossil 15#1

The fourth brooch was one of my experiments with nature printing and embossing. I inked up a parsley seed head with waterless block printing ink then made a small sheet of paper from recycled abaca and pressed the inked seed head into the paper and dried it on a sheet of fibro cement. I then gave it a few coats of shellac then sewed seed beads on.

Seed

I tried a few different ferns as well as the seed heads and then I also printed onto some mixed fibre sheets I had made as samples for the workshop I am running in early July, Journey; an Artist Book from Go to Whoa.

Friday, May 15, 2015

I have updated my website www.gailstiffe.info with instructions for making paper from the inner bark of the mulberry tree. This method also works beautifully with daphne, fig and hibiscus and many other shrubs. Here are the images.